• 0 Posts
  • 142 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 1st, 2023

help-circle






  • My “nostalgia favorites” will always be Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time and Sonic 2 (Genesis version). Sonic 2 is just so fun to go back and play any time I want a quick retro sides rolling platformer fix, and I’ve played through it more times than I can count. OoT was the first game I played that showed me what games could be through a combination of story/cutscenes and gameplay, as someone who was never able to get my hands on an SNES to play the epic JRPGs of the console growing up (I loved my Genesis, but let’s be real, those kinds of games on Sega consoles didn’t really come until later).

    Nowadays Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have eclipsed OoT for me, and for other more modern games another standout fave is Fire Emblem Three Houses, due in large part to its story and setting having everything I look for in a game, and its characters actually being more fleshed out and developed than the one-note units handed to you in many other games in the franchise. Engage has more… Engaging gameplay (sorry not sorry for the pun) but the story and characters hold it back quite a bit for me. Gameplay-wise, my favorite strategy RPG actually has to be Triangle Strategy, in that it has quite creative maps and every unit is designed with the potential to be useful depending on how you approach your own strategy, but I like the story/characters of Three Houses at least a bit more, and I tend to value story more in general in games. I’m also a big fan of the Ace Attorney franchise for the overarching story, characters and writing that it’s built up through its history. Phoenix, Maya, Edgeworth, Apollo and friends are all among some of my favorite characters in gaming, and I’m glad I decided long ago to give that quirky-seeming series a try. AA7 when, Capcom?





  • Ugh, I remember those days well. I saw personally what MMOs did to two friends of mine (one from high school and one from college), and how the high school friend was able to really pull himself together and make a good life for himself after we helped pull him out of MMO addiction, and how the college friend we couldn’t help just wallowed in a sea of empty energy drink cans and turned EVERYTHING into WoW during that time. I don’t know if he was able to build a solid life/career after college, but I could imagine him looking back at that time and wanting more from it. Either way, I saw both their situations and vowed to never pick up an MMO because I didn’t want the same to happen to me. Just because an addicting game isn’t extractive of one’s money doesn’t mean it’s not harmful if you have a hard time with self-control and moderation. You either lose your money directly or your time, which may cost you money in other ways in addition to other indirect costs. Ultimately you’ll end up losing something of great value you will unlikely get back, if ever.


  • My only frustration was that you had to essentially master the game completely to unlock all the racers. Sure, rewards for mastery all the way to the highest levels of the single player mode are good, but I felt they should have changed it up so you unlock all the racers earlier and offered some different rewatds for the end. Or maybe I’m just salty that I had to go to the very end on the highest difficulty to play as characters I wanted to play from the start, in a Sega racer, no less, which are generally harder than most. At least in a game like Smash Bros Brawl, you just had to beat the final boss to unlock Sonic, you didn’t have to perfect it on the highest difficulty.







  • Yep, it’s a byproduct of the “bit wars” in the gaming culture of the '80s and '90s where each successive console generation had much more of a visual grqphical upgrade without sacrificing too much in other technical aspects like framerate/performance. Nowadays if you want that kind of upgrade you’re better off making a big investment in a beefy gaming rig because consoles have a realistic price point to consider, and even then we’re getting to a point of diminishing returns when it comes to the real noticeable graphical differences. Even back in the '80s/'90s the most powerful consoles of the time (such as the Neo Geo) were prohibitively expensive for most people. Either way, the most lauded games of the past few years have been the ones that put the biggest focus on aspects like engaging gameplay and/or immersive story and setting. One of the strongest candidates for this year’s Game of the Year could probably run on a potato and was basically poker with some interesting twists: essentially the opposite of a big studio AAA game. Baldur’s Gate 3 showed studios that gamers are looking for an actual complete game for their $60, and indie hits such as the aforementioned Balatro are showing then that you can make games look and play great without all the super realistic graphics or immense budget if you have that solid gameplay, story/setting and art style. Call of Duty Black Ops 48393 with the only real “innovation” being more realistic sun glare on your rifle is just asking for failure.



  • Personal human contact is still an important thing to have for one’s mental health and wellbeing at any age, and that includes the elderly and the young interacting with each other You’d think that was an important societal lesson the isolated Covid years should have taught us. Do you not think that making robots do all the work of caring for the elderly at least gives off vibes of the young just tossing out the old? A robot can never provide the personal touch of care that a human can. When I get old the last thing I would want would be just to be sent to some “home” with my only contact being with machines and computers.